The Greatest Commencement Addresses of All Time

By Maria Popova

The commencement address is the secular sermon of our time — a packet of timeless advice on life, dispensed by a podium-perched patronly or matronly shaman of wisdom to a congregation of eager young minds about to enter the so-called “real world.” But the genre’s finest specimens speak to all of us looking for some guidance on the path to the Good Life, transcending boundaries of age or occupation or life-stage. The best commencement speeches are also masterworks of paradox: On the one hand, they gently remind us that what we think we know, we don’t; on the other, they urge us to trust our deepest intuitions about confidence, kindness, integrity, and all those embarrassingly elemental truths which, in all other contexts, our culturally conditioned cynicism leads us to dismiss as tired truisms. But not here — the commencement address is society’s most potent mechanism for clearing the clouds of our cynicism just long enough to allow a few rays of receptivity to shine through, long enough to hang our beliefs and vulnerabilities and hopes on something solid and soul-affirming, and to do so in a non-ironic way.

Gathered in this ongoing archive are the best commencement addresses I’ve encountered over the years — words of wisdom that offer such rare respite, a source of sincere solace for us cynical moderns. Please enjoy.

Jeff Bezos on cleverness vs. kindness (Princeton, 2010)“Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.”

Teresita Fernández on What It Really Takes to Be an Artist“Being an artist is not just about what happens when you are in the studio. The way you live, the people you choose to love and the way you love them, the way you vote, the words that come out of your mouth… will also become the raw material for the art you make.”

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